new jersey

I knew from the outset that I wanted to capture the sensation of movement when shooting for this assignment and reflect the feeling of barreling down train tracks and looking out the window as light distorts the passing scenery. At first, I attempted to use a disposable camera, but after a dry run with it, too many of my photos were obscured either due to motion blur, poor lighting, or both. So, I went through once more with my cell phone in tow using an app called SlowShutter ($0.99 on the App Store). The app offers some neat features, including tapping a part of the screen to focus, timer settings and syncs with the iPhone’s native photo app (which can’t be said of the miserable ShutterSpeed app I tried using before). The feature I relied on most heavily (solely, in fact) was the motion blur slider, which you can set from “minimum” to “maximum.” Because I was already on a moving train, I set the effect to minimum to keep the photos from coming out too blurry.

I wanted to recreate the experience New Jerseyans face when they ride the PATCO to call into question why we seem to gloss over passing through Camden and focus on our destination, Philadelphia. I start at Woodcrest, using depth of field photos of big houses (I love the motion blur on the little kid slide in front of the nearest house) and the blurriness of the Westmont station’s empty parking lot to juxtapose two different kinds of emptiness, quietness, between towns, one of calm and another more somber. And while I considered taking photos of Camden itself, I thought it would be better to just take photos of what one can see from the train because, as Errol Morris wrote in Believing is Seeing, “The whole act of creating a photograph is an act of cropping reality (165).” Yes, Camden is home to Cooper, a well-respected hospital, a Rutgers campus and the Susquehanna Bank Center, a popular concert venue, which are nice, but do not erase the reputation Camden has earned itself locally and nationwide over the years. Because there are glimpses of of urban decay when going through Camden on PATCO, I highlighted those objects to serve as representative of the state of the entire city.

To demonstrate the broken down-ness of Camden, I included photos like the fallen brick building(s?). I find the picture works so well because it is framed by a passing tree on the right and rubble from a standing wall on the left, and it appears as if thousands of bricks are spilling through the frame. How long have they been there? House many buildings did they compose? How do tens of thousands of people pass by them every day and yet no one cares to remove the eyesore? I also wanted to juxtapose the buildings that had graffiti on them with those that did not. For example, the photo I took of the stained off-white building (the pattern even kind of makes it look like it was by design) communicates the same sense of age and abandonment as the tagged walls of old buildings, but in a different way. In another shot, the tagged walls are framed by shrubbery that appear to point toward the graffiti, as if someone had stepped over them and repositioned them to gain access to their canvas.

In crossing the Ben Franklin Bridge, you can almost feel a sense of relief that you’re putting Camden behind you and reaching one of the most historically significant cities in our country. My favorite shot of the essay if of the Philadelphia port, with the Camden waterfront out of the frame. Then, the shot of the 15th / 16th and Locust stop of the lines of the stopped train and the woman stopping by the steps to do her makeup before she leaves the station and heads out onto the street. To contrast with the graffiti seen throughout the ride on Camden buildings, at the 12 and 13 and Locust station is a beautiful, colorful mural on the side of a building, framed by a traffic light and the PATCO signpost. And then, finally, we see the upturned perspective at the tall buildings as you walk back underground at 8th and Market to leave, watching the oncoming bridge traffic blur by as you prepare to zoom past Camden again. As Roland Barthes wrote in “Rhetoric of the Image” ” … the photograph … establishes not a consciousness of the being-there of the thing … but an awareness of having-been-there (278).” Between my frames through train windows, bottom-to-top perspectives of Philadelphia’s tall buildings and motion blur over Camden, I hope to have imparted that consciousness unto those so they can experience it as if they were there (minus the hassle of having to receive change in the form of Sacaqawea coins jingling in their pockets the rest of the day).

Since 1969, the Port Authority Transit Corporation High Speed Rail has shuttled New Jersey commuters to and from work in Camden and Philadelphia. Beginning in Lindenwold, the train carries tens of thousands of passengers every day through South Jersey into the city of brotherly love. Riding the train reveals a lot about New Jersey and its relationship to Philadelphia, but perhaps more importantly to South Jersey’s relationship with Camden, the most crime-ridden, impoverished city in the country.

Though the Ferry Avenue station is above ground, the Broadway and City Hall stops are underground. After riding along the middle class suburban homes down Haddon Avenue through Cherry Hill, Haddonfield and Collingswood, looking out the windows of the cars shows a stark transition between the rest of SJ and Camden: Dilapidated, graffiti-tagged buildings whiz by on one side, while lots of totaled, abandoned cars line on the other. It’s almost as if, when coming up from the underground and onto the Ben Franklin bridge, passengers are escaping from the dregs of a forgotten city with the promise of Philly as they cross the Delaware River, emerging from one of the stations into the bustling cityscape.

This photo essay demonstrates that journey from the quiet suburbs to Philadelphia through the city every NJ resident would rather not think about. Monday through Friday, the PATCO delivers people to and from work, and on weekends it brings 20 -and-30-somethings to Old City to party in Philly’s budding nightlife scene. Despite living in such close proximity to it and traveling at hmmm mph through it, we don’t really give much thought to the blemish of Camden we consider it to be. The following photos capture that attitude and the glimpses of Camden we only see for a few moments as we’re on our way to our office or to the bar.

I recently stumbled across an article on cheezburger.com that changed how I looked at movies. This site took well-known movie posters and pasted 1-star reviews from Amazon on them, doing it, as I believe, for the laughs.

But @awfulreviews is also making some pointed arguments about how texts function within images. Since images allow so much room for interpretation, texts that appear alongside the images direct the viewer on how to interpret the images.

Let’s look at the Goonies poster on this site as an example. The author of the page chooses two quotes to include on the poster. The first: “Within the first 5 minutes of the movie there was foul language by the KIDS in the movie, reference to drugs, and a small statue of a naked man with an erection.” The second: “Unrelentingly loud, roll-your-eyes predictable and never less than obnoxious: the movie equivalent of New Jersey.”

The first describes the way the movie is seemingly inappropriate for children: bad language, drug use and sexual innuendo. All things parents want to shelter their kids from until an appropriate age. But the review becomes a figure of authority, seeming important enough to be placed on the poster. The reviewer is a supposed expert that watched the movie and gave an honest opinion.

This is one person’s opinion of why the movie shouldn’t be watched by children. And children deceptively appear to be the target audience, with a PG rating. Yet nudity, profanity and violence are all allowed in a PG rated film, and the Ratings Board recommends that parents view the movie before allowing their children to see it.

But who is to say what age the movie was actually intended for? It could be for adults, with the rating causing some deception. There are still a number of good values to be learned from the movie like adventure, caring, and acceptance, to be broad, even if the way those messages are received is deemed inappropriate. A parent seeing this review first would reject watching the movie. The text guides their way of thinking, even if the poster itself doesn’t suggest anything inappropriate.

The second review assumes a larger-scale analysis of the movie, comparing the movie to New Jersey. Most people will think of the other shows that idealize New Jersey, like the party-hard lifestyle of the Jersey Shore, the conniving and secretive world of Boardwalk Empire or the dangerous and thrilling one of the Sopranos. They may agree, from these samples alone, that sure, New Jersey has a reputation and this movie is living up to said reputation. That being said, the review can be interpreted in different ways based on how much they agree. People who live in New Jersey, or who have spent a considerable amount of time there, may see the interpretation differently than those who have never visited the state.

So far, the Goonies doesn’t seem like a movie most viewers would be interested in watching. But would the poster seem different with its five-star Amazon reviews?

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Nothing on the poster itself suggests any of these things, good or bad. All the viewer sees is an artistic rendition of the main characters surrounded by treasure and an eerie location, and appearing afraid of something out of the view of the viewer.

As Errol Morris, in his book Believing is Seeing, describes, captions in photographs can influence how we perceive them, whether or not we know the truth about the photo. Captions are simply an “attempt to put the photograph in context” (194), but many points of view may influence that context. People who didn’t like the movie, that write negative reviews, would frame the movie in a very different context than someone who enjoyed the movie.

Our own beliefs also influence the way we see and analyze pictures. Even with these negative reviews on the movie posters, if you liked the movie in the first place, more than likely you’ll keep on liking the movie. You’ll come up with some reason to argue against the text and reinforce your own opinion, passing the review off as “they don’t understand the point of the movie” or “someone just trying to cause trouble.” The most effective reviews on posters are for the audiences that haven’t seen the movie before – and haven’t heard anything else about it.

So next time you consider watching a movie solely from its reviews, remember that the review belongs to one opinionated person. The image on the poster itself isn’t making an argument, only the person who wants you to believe them.